Reconsidering Rand's Ethics

[George H. Smith]

Adam, it would be good satire if it were actually relevant to what I'd advocated.

But I did not advocate uniform rules across OL, I advocated an experiment, where somebody could start a thread and specify that it's subject to certain rules. All this energy George is putting in to derail an idea that has little chance of being tried anyway is convincing me that it's probably quite a lot better an idea than I'd originally thought.

George tries to paint this like it'd be impossible to follow certain rules, but really, how hard would it be to avoid ad hominem? Or to refrain from changing the subject to something irrelevant (of course, banning ad hominem would eliminate most of this, because most of the time the subject is changed to some new attack on someone). Nobody advocated a litany of legal codes.

That's why I mention that it's amazing that human beings both got to the moon and produce someone as thick-headed as George. It's just not that complicated to do what I'm suggesting. If George were on the original NASA team, he would have demoralized them in two weeks listing all the ways that it was impossible to do anything because, he would imagine, that no one could ever work together to the same purpose.

Shayne

RE: ANOTHER NOTE FROM THE MODERATING PRINCIPLE

Dear Shayne:

This is to inform you that another complaint has been filed against you by Mr. George H. Smith. He has charged you with "excessive whining."

Although it is the duty of the Moderating Principle to maintain the highest standards of niceness on OL, the MP does not find sufficient merit in Mr. Smith's charge to pursue this matter further. Some explanation is in order.

Although the Digest of Competing Rules mentions "excessive whining," it does so only once in a footnote at 6.33.12. But no formal definition of "excessive whining" is provided. This footnote simply reads: "For excessive whining, see any post by Shayne Wissler."

The MP finds this ostensive definition of "excessive whining" inadequate to support the Complainant's charge against you, especially since it would involve circular reasoning.

It should be noted that the Digest deals with natural competing rules (jus naturale), not with man-made competing rules (jus gentium). The latter, jus gentium, is discussed in considerable detail in Commentaries and Glosses on the Digest of Competing Rules. Here may be found an entire chapter titled "On Whining and Bitching." The section "How to Deal With Excessive Whiners" relates the following popular joke:

Knock, knock.

"Who's there?"

"Nobody understands me! Nobody appreciates how brilliant I am! "

"Shayne, is that you?"

As suggested by this rare display of humor, Commentaries and Glosses deals not with enforceable rules but with standards, or guidelines, designed to minimize the influence of annoying twits. But nowhere in either DCR or C&G are annoying twits specifically banned from OL.

Thus, as stated previously, the MP can find no textual authorization for pursuing Mr. Smith's charge against you.

The MP strongly recommends that you keep a copy of this document with you at all times.

Signed,

The Moderating Principle

[PDS]

Wasn't it Leonard Peikoff who once said, whilst criticizing Aristotle, his implicitly acknowledged intellectual equal, "All things in moderation, except axe murdering."

Yes, I believe it was. I remember this comment well from LP's "Principles of Objectivism" series. Indeed, I believe LP coughed and cleared his throat just before casting us this pearl. Imagine that!

This comment from Peikoff demonstrates that moderation, and especially immoderate moderation, has no place in Objectivism.

[George H. Smith]

Wasn't it Leonard Peikoff who once said, whilst criticizing Aristotle, his implicitly acknowledged intellectual equal, "All things in moderation, except axe murdering."

Yes, I believe it was. I remember this comment well from LP's "Principles of Objectivism" series. Indeed, I believe LP coughed and cleared his throat just before casting us this pearl. Imagine that!

This comment from Peikoff demonstrates that moderation, and especially immoderate moderation, has no place in Objectivism.

I don't know about Peikoff, but I prefer the formulation, Everything in moderation, including moderation.

Words to live by.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

George simply cares not a whit for any kind of moderation, but he's quite willing to think up as many ways as he can to so express himself. It's just his way to keep his engine turning over. All this falderol for no more basic reason. You don't put the Georges of this world into leadership positions and they never submit to domestication or wearing collars: two sides of the same coin. Ad hominem for him is only water off the duck's back and he could care less if it's different for you; he's not giving up his watergun; it's too much fun. There's some kind of pseudo-intellectual sadomasochistic relationship going on here, but it's gotten old for the audience.

--Brant

You surely recall what happened to Old Atlantis after Jimmy Wales appointed himself the Moderator and send little warnings to members who might have posted rude or insulting remarks. Almost all the quality posters left, and that venerable elist withered into nothingness.

An amusing sidelight to this tragedy was when one of the most vociferous advocates of moderation, Jason Alexander, began to receive warning notes himself. He was incredulous, and you could almost see the "Moi?" look on his face as he protested that he never insulted anyone.

I have no problem with Shayne's polemicism, except that he not very good at it. But I do have a problem with Shayne's hypocrisy. He whines continuously about my insulting him, while his posts are packed with more name-calling per line than I have ever used. I have never disowned the tactics I use, whether fair or foul, and I have no respect whatever for Shayne and others who do.

Ridicule can play an important role when dealing with the ridiculous, though I concede that I sometimes overdo it.

As for my supposed "pseudo-intellectual sadomasochistic relationship" with Shayne, I had a similar twisted relationship, as you may recall, with Jason Alexander. But Jason, qua quack, was far more skilled than Shayne, so I enjoyed sparring with Jason more. As I explained to Jason once, there are good quacks and there are bad quacks, and he rated a solid 9 on a scale of 10. Shayne, in contrast, might rate an iffy 5 on one of his better days.

The pointless back-and-forth with Shayne has almost no personal value to me except as writing exercises. I frequently write short polemical posts to prep myself for serious writing. They rarely take me more than a few minutes, maybe ten at most for the more elaborate ones, such as the recent posts by the Moderating Principle. I write them spontaneously and very quickly, off-the-cuff, with virtually no revisions except correcting typos. Some work and some don't -- but when they work they can charge or recharge my batteries for a long day of research and writing.

In short, Shayne functions as my version of a first-person shooter video game. When I grow tired of playing "Red Faction," "Kill Zone," or some other old PS2 game, I turn to Shayne. And he is always there for me, often responding more quickly than it takes to boot up my PS2. It doesn't matter what Shayne says. So long as he keeps responding, I will keep using him until he no longer serves a purpose. I really don't care if others grow tired of these exchanges or never liked them in the first place. I don't read threads that don't interest me, and I assume others can do the same with things that I write.

My purpose is to entertain myself, not others, and when Shayne loses his entertainment value for me, that will be that. He certainly has nothing of intellectual value to offer, at least not in political philosophy.

Ghs

[sjw]

I have no problem with Shayne's polemicism, except that he not very good at it. But I do have a problem with Shayne's hypocrisy.

No one can know what you mean here. On the one hand, you really could be hypocritically whining due to your failure to grasp the distinction between advocating a system of true consent to certain rules of discourse, and actually being in such a system and flouting the rules you agreed to. I mean, sure, you could actually be that stupid. It fits the pattern. On the other hand, you admit that your sole purpose here is disingenuous, that the main way your remarks should be interpreted is not as rational discourse, but as you getting your jollies off. So maybe you're an idiot, or maybe it's simply as you claim: that you're just a vicious, purposeless, intellectual vandal. Who knows? Maybe it's both.

In any case, Brant makes has excellent insight. I'm done feeding the troll.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

I have no problem with Shayne's polemicism, except that he not very good at it. But I do have a problem with Shayne's hypocrisy.

No one can know what you mean here. On the one hand, you really could be hypocritically whining due to your failure to grasp the distinction between advocating a system of true consent to certain rules of discourse, and actually being in such a system and flouting the rules you agreed to. I mean, sure, you could actually be that stupid. It fits the pattern. On the other hand, you admit that your sole purpose here is disingenuous, that the main way your remarks should be interpreted is not as rational discourse, but as you getting your jollies off. So maybe you're an idiot, or maybe it's simply as you claim: that you're just a vicious, purposeless, intellectual vandal. Who knows? Maybe it's both.

In any case, Brant makes has excellent insight. I'm done feeding the troll.

Shayne

Ah, a resolution from Shayne! We shall see how long it lasts.

I've been reading your book. Would you like to know what I think of it?

Ghs

[Selene]

[Selene]

Adam, it would be good satire if it were actually relevant to what I'd advocated.

But I did not advocate uniform rules across OL, I advocated an experiment, where somebody could start a thread and specify that it's subject to certain rules. All this energy George is putting in to derail an idea that has little chance of being tried anyway is convincing me that it's probably quite a lot better an idea than I'd originally thought.

George tries to paint this like it'd be impossible to follow certain rules, but really, how hard would it be to avoid ad hominem? Or to refrain from changing the subject to something irrelevant (of course, banning ad hominem would eliminate most of this, because most of the time the subject is changed to some new attack on someone). Nobody advocated a litany of legal codes.

That's why I mention that it's amazing that human beings both got to the moon and produce someone as thick-headed as George. It's just not that complicated to do what I'm suggesting. If George were on the original NASA team, he would have demoralized them in two weeks listing all the ways that it was impossible to do anything because, he would imagine, that no one could ever work together to the same purpose.

Shayne

Shayne:

I do apologize to you for constantly poking fun at your discourse.

However, a while back, I offered a debate thread with rules. I can look it up and post it, but as I remember, you rejected it rather rudely.

It is this ambivalent aspect of your argumentation that is rather confusing to myself as an outside observer. One of the reasons that I do not engage in debate with you since our earliest experiences on OL is that they degenerated really quickly to personal attacks which your assert that you abhor.

Part of argument and debate is savage humor.

You even made reference to the British Parliament give and take once or twice, if my memory serves me correctly.

Therefore, it appears to me, and here George is absolutely correct, you appear to want it both ways.

It does not work that way.

Why do we not try starting afresh?

Adam

[sjw]

Shayne:

I do apologize to you for constantly poking fun at your discourse.

However, a while back, I offered a debate thread with rules. I can look it up and post it, but as I remember, you rejected it rather rudely.

It is this ambivalent aspect of your argumentation that is rather confusing to myself as an outside observer. One of the reasons that I do not engage in debate with you since our earliest experiences on OL is that they degenerated really quickly to personal attacks which your assert that you abhor.

Part of argument and debate is savage humor.

You even made reference to the British Parliament give and take once or twice, if my memory serves me correctly.

Therefore, it appears to me, and here George is absolutely correct, you appear to want it both ways.

It does not work that way.

Why do we not try starting afresh?

Adam

I say "let's create a place where people consent to rules," then you attack me for violating the rules I suggest, calling me a hypocrite, all the while ignoring the fact that no party, including me, has consented to any rules. WTF? I'm just suggesting that maybe we should try consenting to rules, a variety of them created by anyone who wants to create them, in limited areas. I never said these are dogmatic rules that everyone has a moral duty to follow everywhere.

Clearly, it is not a contradiction to suggest that we create some area where ad hominem is prohibited. And just because people were throwing punches doesn't mean they can't stop, or that the main thing to do when someone suggests peaceful, reasonable means of dealing with problems is to call them a "hypocrite" and then keep on swinging.

The real issue underneath all this dust being thrown into the air by George is the actual agenda of the various parties here. No one whose purpose is getting to the truth of the matter enjoys the inefficiency created from, for example, the nonsense George and I have been engaged in above. And actually rules may not really be needed if people's motives were pure. We could have a debate, and every so often somebody would throw in a barb, but the main thrust of the debate would remain on point due to the mutual shared purpose of getting to the truth.

But because of untoward motives, some abuse the liberty of having no rules, using massive piles of ad hominem and other illogical means to divert attention from the fact that their points have no logical merit.

It's a simple experiment I'm suggesting. Why is this objected to so vociferously, spitefully, and dishonestly? I think it's easy to infer why.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

Adam, it would be good satire if it were actually relevant to what I'd advocated.

But I did not advocate uniform rules across OL, I advocated an experiment, where somebody could start a thread and specify that it's subject to certain rules. All this energy George is putting in to derail an idea that has little chance of being tried anyway is convincing me that it's probably quite a lot better an idea than I'd originally thought.

George tries to paint this like it'd be impossible to follow certain rules, but really, how hard would it be to avoid ad hominem? Or to refrain from changing the subject to something irrelevant (of course, banning ad hominem would eliminate most of this, because most of the time the subject is changed to some new attack on someone). Nobody advocated a litany of legal codes.

That's why I mention that it's amazing that human beings both got to the moon and produce someone as thick-headed as George. It's just not that complicated to do what I'm suggesting. If George were on the original NASA team, he would have demoralized them in two weeks listing all the ways that it was impossible to do anything because, he would imagine, that no one could ever work together to the same purpose.

Shayne

Shayne:

I do apologize to you for constantly poking fun at your discourse.

However, a while back, I offered a debate thread with rules. I can look it up and post it, but as I remember, you rejected it rather rudely.

It is this ambivalent aspect of your argumentation that is rather confusing to myself as an outside observer. One of the reasons that I do not engage in debate with you since our earliest experiences on OL is that they degenerated really quickly to personal attacks which your assert that you abhor.

Part of argument and debate is savage humor.

You even made reference to the British Parliament give and take once or twice, if my memory serves me correctly.

Therefore, it appears to me, and here George is absolutely correct, you appear to want it both ways.

It does not work that way.

Why do we not try starting afresh?

Adam

Start afresh with Shayne? Good luck with that. I gave this a serious try on the "overgrown teenagers" thread by cutting out all polemicism and asking Shayne some straightforward, nonrhetorical questions about his views on government. He managed to get through the first one or two questions, but he quickly went bonkers again after I asked him to define what he meant by "government." As I noted at the time, there is no greater obstacle to understanding what Shayne means than to ask Shayne what he means.

I can again express myself candidly on this delicate issue without fear that Shayne will post one of his lunatic replies. For, as Shayne wrote, he is "done feeding the troll."

Of course, this news left me heartbroken. Without Shayne, my life will become a bleak and meaningless void. Existentialist angst of this kind and to this degree has not been experienced by anyone since Br'er Rabbit was thrown into the Briar Patch. But I will survive, somehow.

Ghs

[Selene]

Shayne:

"...attack..." there was no attack

"...calling me a hypocrite..." I pointed out an apparent inconsistency in your approach

"...if people's motives were pure..." a tad clairvoyant and judgmental?

"...untoward motives..." ditto

"...so vociferously, spitefully, and dishonestly..." three for three

Well, that was a nice fresh start.

Thanks again Shayne

And be safe.

Adam

[George H. Smith]

I say "let's create a place where people consent to rules," then you attack me for violating the rules I suggest, calling me a hypocrite, all the while ignoring the fact that no party, including me, has consented to any rules. WTF? I'm just suggesting that maybe we should try consenting to rules, a variety of them created by anyone who wants to create them, in limited areas. I never said these are dogmatic rules that everyone has a moral duty to follow everywhere.

Clearly, it is not a contradiction to suggest that we create some area where ad hominem is prohibited. And just because people were throwing punches doesn't mean they can't stop, or that the main thing to do when someone suggests peaceful, reasonable means of dealing with problems is to call them a "hypocrite" and then keep on swinging.

The real issue underneath all this dust being thrown into the air by George is the actual agenda of the various parties here. No one whose purpose is getting to the truth of the matter enjoys the inefficiency created from, for example, the nonsense George and I have been engaged in above. And actually rules may not really be needed if people's motives were pure. We could have a debate, and every so often somebody would throw in a barb, but the main thrust of the debate would remain on point due to the mutual shared purpose of getting to the truth.

But because of untoward motives, some abuse the liberty of having no rules, using massive piles of ad hominem and other illogical means to divert attention from the fact that their points have no logical merit.

It's a simple experiment I'm suggesting. Why is this objected to so vociferously, spitefully, and dishonestly? I think it's easy to infer why.

Shayne

This is so sweet, Shayne. I admire your heroic efforts to make OL a nicer place -- a site suitable for small children, cuddly animals, and Shayne Wissler.

You correctly point out that "rules may not really be needed if people's motives were pure." It is a given that your motives are, and always have been, pure. You are an indomitable seeker of the truth. We must therefore focus on your spiteful and dishonest critics who spurn the truth and who prefer to throw up dust instead. It must be a heavy burden indeed to be the Uncorrupted One in a Land of Corruption.

I suggest that you start a special thread with a list of rules that will guide consenting participants to the Promised Land of Purity. Of course, someone will be needed to render final judgment as to when a consensual rule has been violated and when an apology is appropriate.

You are the obvious choice for this role, but, as a keen student of history and politics, you will understand the danger of vesting this power in one person. I therefore suggest that we constitute a Committee of Safety and Good Manners that will resolve any controversies about rule violations and appropriate apologies.

The Committee of Safety and Good Manners will consist of three co-equal judges, with a majority of two judges needed to render a final verdict. I hereby nominate you, myself, and Jeff Riggenbach to serve as permanent members of the Committee of Safety and Good Manners. I trust you will have no objection to my nominees.

I pray we can put the past behind us, Shayne, and, with you as our uncorrupted seeker of the truth, march in harmony and happiness through a very special thread.

With admiration and affection,

Ghs

[sjw]

George,

I would entertain the possibility of you being the sole moderator and adjudicator. The only condition is that you'd have to swear by your honor to adjudicate fairly and in good faith to the intended meaning of the rules. Perhaps you have no honor and as such such swearing would mean nothing, but I am willing to risk it.

On the other hand, I doubt that you are willing to risk trying something that just might work.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

George,

I would entertain the possibility of you being the sole moderator and adjudicator. The only condition is that you'd have to swear by your honor to adjudicate fairly and in good faith to the intended meaning of the rules. Perhaps you have no honor and as such such swearing would mean nothing, but I am willing to risk it.

On the other hand, I doubt that you are willing to risk trying something that just might work.

Shayne

Seriously, Shayne, if you want to start a moderated thread, then just start it. There is no point in all this discussion.

I have no interest in moderating anyone or anything. It will be your thread, so you moderate it. But if you exercise a heavy hand or demand apologies, then the thread will disintegrate. Count on it.

I suggest that you forget about obtaining consent and simply request that participants exercise reasonable constraint in their zingers and polemical comments. It that doesn't do the trick, nothing will.

In the final analysis, the success of your thread, like any thread, will depend on the substantive quality of the posts, not on any rules.

The only "moderated" online debate I have ever participated in occurred around 15 years ago on Old Atlantis, while I was still living in SF. I was invited to be one of four participants in a formal debate on anarchism versus minarchism, with two participants defending each position. Will Thomas was one of my opponents, but I don't recall the other two participants. My online article, "In Defense of Rational Anarchism," is an abridged version of my contributions.

This debate worked for two reasons: First, no one other than the four debaters was permitted to post comments until the formal part of the debate had concluded. Second, each debater was asked to post a initial argument, followed by several rebuttals. I don't recall the word limitations or the exact number of rebuttals, but they were reasonable and left ample scope to develop theoretical points.

These two rules were responsible for the success of that debate. The debaters were also asked to remain civil, but that was never a problem. Polemicism normally occurs in quickly written comments, not in carefully written essays of the sort that might be published in a journal or an anthology. Most people with the ability to write such essays appreciate the value of civil discourse in this kind of setting, and they don't need to be lectured to about it or make some kind of promise.

There is a rub here, however. You need to find qualified people who are willing to invest the necessary time, which can be considerable.

When the forum was thrown open to everyone, the quality tended to degenerate, and I lost interest in it before long. But this is the normal result of a free-for-all and had nothing to do with incivility. The tone initially established by the four major participants was generally followed by the herd, and I don't recall that incivility was ever a major issue.

Lastly, if you were to start a debate with this kind of structure, you could not be both a participant and a moderator. You would need to choose one role or the other. The moderator of the Atlantis debate was credible because he was not a participant. He remained fair and impartial throughout.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

The Committee of Safety and Good Manners will consist of three co-equal judges, with a majority of two judges needed to render a final verdict. I hereby nominate you, myself, and Jeff Riggenbach to serve as permanent members of the Committee of Safety and Good Manners. I trust you will have no objection to my nominees.

I pray we can put the past behind us, Shayne, and, with you as our uncorrupted seeker of the truth, march in harmony and happiness through a very special thread.

With admiration and affection,

Ghs

Okay, George, you really didn't think you could sneak Jeff in there now, did you? Naughty, naughty.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

The Committee of Safety and Good Manners will consist of three co-equal judges, with a majority of two judges needed to render a final verdict. I hereby nominate you, myself, and Jeff Riggenbach to serve as permanent members of the Committee of Safety and Good Manners. I trust you will have no objection to my nominees.

I pray we can put the past behind us, Shayne, and, with you as our uncorrupted seeker of the truth, march in harmony and happiness through a very special thread.

With admiration and affection,

Ghs

Okay, George, you really didn't think you could sneak Jeff in there now, did you? Naughty, naughty.

--Brant

A Committee of Safety and Good Manners with JR as the swing vote is the kind of moderation I can live with. The worst that would happen is that someone might get kicked off the thread for bad grammar and/or misspelled words.

Ghs

[Ellen Stuttle]

The only "moderated" online debate I have ever participated in occurred around 15 years ago on Old Atlantis, while I was still living in SF.

Old Atlantis didn't exist 15 years ago while you were still living in SF.

Posts on Old Atlantis began April 15, 1999, and you didn't start posting on that list until sometime in the first few months of 2000. I don't recall there ever being a "moderated" debate on Old Atlantis. Such "moderation" as was attempted by Jimbo only started with the civility policy in February 2002 (I think was the month) which resulted in most of the Old ATL group leaving for ATL_II.

Ellen

[Jonathan]

The only "moderated" online debate I have ever participated in occurred around 15 years ago on Old Atlantis, while I was still living in SF.

Old Atlantis didn't exist 15 years ago while you were still living in SF.

Posts on Old Atlantis began April 15, 1999, and you didn't start posting on that list until sometime in the first few months of 2000. I don't recall there ever being a "moderated" debate on Old Atlantis. Such "moderation" as was attempted by Jimbo only started with the civility policy in February 2002 (I think was the month) which resulted in most of the Old ATL group leaving for ATL_II.

Ellen

Maybe George was thinking of one of the other WeTheLiving sub-lists (and was a little off on the timeline)?

J

Edited February 24, 2011 by Jonathan

[George H. Smith]

The only "moderated" online debate I have ever participated in occurred around 15 years ago on Old Atlantis, while I was still living in SF.

Old Atlantis didn't exist 15 years ago while you were still living in SF.

Posts on Old Atlantis began April 15, 1999, and you didn't start posting on that list until sometime in the first few months of 2000. I don't recall there ever being a "moderated" debate on Old Atlantis. Such "moderation" as was attempted by Jimbo only started with the civility policy in February 2002 (I think was the month) which resulted in most of the Old ATL group leaving for ATL_II.

Ellen

The debate occurred in November, 1997. It was moderated by that military guy, an O'ist whose name I cannot now recall but who ran (not moderated) Atlantis before Wales butted in. He was the guy who invited me to participate in the debate.

The list may not have been called "Atlantis" at that time, but it was probably the precursor to Atlantis, at least.

Now that I think of it, the earlier list was called "OWL," which stood for "Objectivism: We the Living," or something like that. I assumed that OWL was transformed into Atlantis around the time that Wales offered the use of his computers, long before he declared himself the Moderator. I made this assumption because the people associated with OWL were largely the same people associated with Atlantis, and by the time I started to post on Atlantis in 2000, OWL seemed to have disappeared.

I could be wrong, of course. All this might have been purely coincidental.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

The only "moderated" online debate I have ever participated in occurred around 15 years ago on Old Atlantis, while I was still living in SF.

Old Atlantis didn't exist 15 years ago while you were still living in SF.

Posts on Old Atlantis began April 15, 1999, and you didn't start posting on that list until sometime in the first few months of 2000. I don't recall there ever being a "moderated" debate on Old Atlantis. Such "moderation" as was attempted by Jimbo only started with the civility policy in February 2002 (I think was the month) which resulted in most of the Old ATL group leaving for ATL_II.

Ellen

The debate occurred in November, 1997. It was moderated by that military guy, an O'ist whose name I cannot now recall but who ran (not moderated) Atlantis before Wales butted in. He was the guy who invited me to participate in the debate.

The list may not have been called "Atlantis" at that time, but it was probably the precursor to Atlantis, at least.

Now that I think of it, the earlier list was called "OWL," which stood for "Objectivism: We the Living," or something like that. I assumed that OWL was transformed into Atlantis around the time that Wales offered the use of his computers, long before he declared himself the Moderator. I made this assumption because the people associated with OWL were largely the same people associated with Atlantis, and by the time I started to post on Atlantis in 2000, OWL seemed to have disappeared.

I could be wrong, of course. All this might have been purely coincidental.

Ghs

I think this all started out of Cornell. And anybody remember "The John Galt Line"?

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

The only "moderated" online debate I have ever participated in occurred around 15 years ago on Old Atlantis, while I was still living in SF.

Old Atlantis didn't exist 15 years ago while you were still living in SF.

Posts on Old Atlantis began April 15, 1999, and you didn't start posting on that list until sometime in the first few months of 2000. I don't recall there ever being a "moderated" debate on Old Atlantis. Such "moderation" as was attempted by Jimbo only started with the civility policy in February 2002 (I think was the month) which resulted in most of the Old ATL group leaving for ATL_II.

Ellen

Maybe George was thinking of one of the other WeTheLiving sub-lists (and was a little off on the timeline)?

J

I was correct on the timeline. See my article "In Defense of Rational Anarchism," which is merely an abridged transcription of several of my posts, here. . It is dated November, 1997. This is the same date that appears on some of my computer files.

Was Atlantis a sublist of WeTheLiving? If so, maybe another sublist was called "Objectivism" (hence "OWL"), which would be the sublist where the debate took place.

Yeah, I think this may be the explanation.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Things are becoming a bit clearer to me now.

My first post on WTL in 2000 was posted on a sublist called "Books." When my post elicited a spirited debate and caused some subscribers to complain about the heavy traffic, the military guy -- I hate calling him this; does anyone remember his name? -- suggested that I move to Atlantis, another sublist of WTL. I recall that he described Atlantis as a wild free for all.

I think he contrasted Atlantis with yet another sublist called "Objectivism," which he represented as more formal, less polemical, and more narrowly focused on technical philosophical issues of interest to O'ists. But whether "OWL" was actually moderated, I cannot say.

In any case, the 1997 debate occurred on OWL, not Atlantis -- a sublist of WTL that did not exist at that time.

In short, ignore most of what I said in my earlier posts.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

Did his name begin with a "K"?

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

But whether "OWL" was actually moderated, I cannot say.

OWL was moderated and I think there was a limit to the number of posts a person was allowed per day.

In any case, the 1997 debate occurred on OWL, not Atlantis -- a sublist of WTL that did not exist at that time.

OWL and ATL and other WTL lists were all started at the same time, though there was a bit of a delay getting ATL up and running.

If the debate occurred in 1997, it might have been on the old list which preceded the WTL group - Kirez Korgan's cornell-l list. Joshua Zader, who was good friends with Kirez, joined as moderator of that list. And then they decided to start a new set of lists. Jimbo eventually came into it and had the power to pull the plug because they needed a server when Kirez didn't have Cornell as a base any longer, so Jimbo provided server hosting.

Ellen

[George H. Smith]

Did his name begin with a "K"?

--Brant

Yep! Would you like to buy a vowel?

Hey, my brain finally kicked in! His name is Kirez -- this much I am certain of -- something or other. Korgan, maybe?

Ghs